"I played a lot of cowboys and Indians until discovering 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' at age 7. After that, I hung up my spurs."

Lauren Daley

"I played a lot of cowboys and Indians until discovering 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' at age 7. After that, I hung up my spurs."

— Richard Shindell

He writes like John Prine and sounds a bit like an American Richard Thompson.

So, yes. I'm a Richard Shindell fan.

Besides being a meticulous craftsman of a songwriter, Shindell is a fascinating guy — he spent time as a Zen Buddhist monk, studied theology, married a woman from Patagonia and is now an ex-pat living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

From his first record, "Sparrow's Point" (1992) to his latest "Not Far Now" (2009), Shindell has wowed critics and fans alike.

Because his songs are short stories. He paints vivid character sketches and often tells his stories from a first-person point of view — Mary Magdalene, an INS officer, a World War II soldier, a Confederate drummer — the eclectic list goes on.

Shindell plays the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River Friday evening. I caught up with him recently.

Born in New Jersey in 1960, Shindell grew up on Long Island in Port Washington, N.Y., where he first took guitar lessons.

"I played a lot of cowboys and Indians until discovering 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' at age 7. After that, I hung up my spurs," Shindell told me.

He attended Hobart College in upstate New York, and, during a stint at Moravian College, teamed up with John Gorka — a great songwriter in his own right — in the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band.

"That was great fun. John had just started writing songs. I was completely in awe and inspired," he said.

I was fascinated to learn that, after graduating from Hobart, Shindell moved into a Zen Buddhist monastery for nine months.

"Buddhism made sense to me. Still does. I'm Not sure 'like' would be the right word. Let's just say it was, and is, helpful," Shindell told me.

He then left to explore Europe, ending up as the proverbial struggling musician in Paris, where he would often play for coins near train stations.

Long fascinated by philosophy and religion, Shindell left Paris to head back to New York City, where he enrolled in Union Theological Seminary. Between classes, he wrote his first "keeper" song, a cryptic ode to the Virgin Mary, "On a Sea of Fleur de Lis."

In 1997, his career got a boost when Joan Baez covered three of his songs on her album "Gone From Danger," and invited him on her 1997-'98 tour.

Shindell told me he was "surprised to say the least. I was thrilled. She's fantastic."

"Dar and I were on tour on the West Coast, circa 1998. We had this idea that it would be really fun to invent a project that would allow us to sing three-part harmony with impunity," he said. "Lucy and I had sung together quite a bit, so asking her to join in was a no-brainier."

In 2000, Shindell released "Somewhere Near Patterson," and then moved somewhere far from Patterson — he and his wife moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to raise their kids.

"Despite Argentina's political and economic dysfunction, it's a wonderful place to live," he said.

Shindell returned to writing originals with 2009's "Not Far Now." Check out "State of the Union" from that record. Wow.

I asked him what inspires him as a songwriter.

"I wish I knew. Inspiration is elusive," he told me. "Sometimes an idea arrives whole, entire. It knows what it wants to be from the get-go. Other songs require lots of heavy lifting — wading through lots of bad ideas, false starts, and blind alleys. In either case, the important thing is to show up every day."

His song "Last Fare of the Day" is a beautiful song about a cabbie in New York City, and his song "Abuelita," is about a grandmother in Argentina.

But "the funny thing is, I wrote 'Last Fare of the Day' in Argentina and 'Abuelita' in New York! Maybe distance provides perspective," Shindell said.

As for his musical influences?

"Dylan, The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Gram Parsons, Grateful Dead, and a North Carolina-based bluegrass artist named Arlene Kesterson," he said. "My parents took me to see her one summer night in 1972, I think. Blew my mind."

Lauren Daley is a freelance writer and music columnist for The Fall River Spirit. Contact her at ldaley33@gmail.com.

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